Shift

TWO.2

Kayden was running, her legs unable to take her fast enough down the crumbling sidewalks. Skyscrapers leered down at her, their twisted metal shapes hunching over as if they were about to collapse. The air was thick, pollutants invading her lungs, choking her slowly. And everywhere she turned she caught glimpses of strange figures dressed in all black, always at the edge of her vision and always disappearing when she turned to look at them head-on.

But as she sprinted down the road, there was something that caught her attention and drew her out of her terror: music.

It was absolutely beautiful, and although the words made no sense to her, she felt at peace. The dark city around her began to fade, as if the song was able to beat back the darkness, and her head started to numb. She grew confused, forgetting where she was and why she was running.

She slowed to a stop, the sounds of her feet slapping against the asphalt dying away as the music took over. She wanted to lie down on the fading streets and close her eyes, and so she began to lower herself to the ground, her legs crumpling beneath her softly. Her mouth turned up in a contented smile, and she relaxed into the asphalt.

But then her arm began to throb with an odd sort of pain, and her head cleared for just a moment as the world around her promptly vanished...

Kayden felt herself slip out of dream world, reality becoming more solid as the seconds crept by. Her arm had fallen asleep, and the pins and needles were pricking her awake. She nearly cursed out loud. She wanted to go back into the dream, and yet her arm anchored her to reality.

Kayden's eyes fluttered open, blinking a few times as she reacquainted herself with her surroundings. Her bedroom was almost completely dark; the only light in the room was emanating from her glowing iHome, which lit up the large wooden cross Lexi had placed on her nightstand before bed. Lexi's stuff from home had already infiltrated Kayden's room. Her cousin was an extremely neat person so it did not create any additional clutter. However, Kayden felt strange seeing these foreign objects lurking among her possessions.

The decorated cross was one such object, and as Kayden stared at it, she sensed that something wasn't right. It took her a full second to realize what it was.

The music from her dream was still there.

It was as beautiful as it had been in dreamland, although now it sounded less like a song and more like a spoken chant. And the more she listened to it, the more her mind seemed to fog over and sleep threatened to drag her back into unconsciousness.

Kayden's eyes flicked over to the foot of her bed to see where the sound was coming from... and she froze.

There was a man standing in the darkness. His hair was dark against his pale skin and he was dressed in all black. In his hands was an opened book.

At first Kayden couldn't place him; her memory was unusually sluggish, and the chant seemed to drown out most of her working thoughts. But then it hit her: he was the guy from earlier. The boy who had blown up the building.

Adrenaline shocked her system awake, and in one single move, Kayden threw off her covers, grabbed onto her cousin's cross, and opened her mouth to scream.

The boy jumped. The book fell to the floor with a loud thud and the chant died away as he held out his hands towards her. "No!" he whispered, terror plainly etched in his features. "Don't scream! Please!"

"Get out of my house!" Kayden rasped, her hands clenching the cross like it was a baseball bat. She didn't think Lexi would be too pleased to know that she was manhandling a religious item like that, but she was too terrified to let go. "If you don't leave right now, I will scream so loudly that every fucking person in this household will wake up, and then I will beat you senseless with this cross!"